I have zero doubt that hourly activations will revitalize the box. 15min was great when box was thriving, but those days are over, it needs to be hourly or box death is imminent.

Players will strive to play at a good pace and finish in time for the next hours activation. This will snowball in to consecutive great box pairings, and way more interest in coaches coming to activate.
This will make the draws in peak times huge and even TV pairings.

Currently for most of the day coaches know there is a very good chance box won't trigger so don't even bother to look, and go do something else.

I keep hearing the awful logic of 'If I miss out on a pairing I don't mind waiting 15mins for the next'. If it is hourly, you will miss out way less often, especially if you activate many teams.

My last game had a TV difference of 1mil, and recently had a 840k gap game.

This should at the very least be trialed. If this is trialed and fails I will gladly banish myself from this site if majority desire this. This will excite some of you lol.

Why not try changing it to a draw every 30 minutes and see what happens. I normally pop in and try to get a box game and if (when) that fails I move over to get a ranked match. If I don't get one I may come back and try again in the box if I have time.

If I were reasonably sure there would be a draw at the top and bottom of the hour I would play more box games.

However, if I get online at 5 minutes after the draw, I am not going to wait around an entire hour for a draw. I will try to get a ranked match.

15 min interval is already easy to forget. Having 30min or 60min wait needs to have some kind of sound (why not same ping ranked has when someone challenges you). You could just leave tab open and boom, it reminds you "hey, you got a game now". Especially if you could activate more than 5 minutes before draw (if you got to wait 20 minutes or so after activation how many of you really are gonna stare at that one screen? i'd most probably watch some videos, write something on forums or social media or prepare something.. etc etc etc).

Or even have sounds for both: when you can activate and another when draw happens.

(Heck, even if 15 min intervals stay, i'd still would like that soundmark)

Wait.. wut? People don't scramble for a chance to play against smallkosp or the WMD's every 15 minutes? That seems.. strange.

I think if there were a 'Black Box' created that did not allow Dwarves, Chaos Dwarves, Chaos, Nurgle, Pact, or Orks, (and almost by necessity, no cheesy Amazons).. you would see a flurry of activity.

No claw, no mass av9. Hell.. even a Box with just ARR! teams would be amazing.

I think it's pretty clear money dosn't talk here.. but if it did.. if a donation drive goal were announced that would prove enough interest in an alternative to regular 'Bash Box' I would happily dedicate my FUMBBL free time to seeing that goal met.

A so called 'Rainbow Box' idea was proposed years ago. The proposal was for ANY alternative to the regular Black Box be trialed once per hour, on the hour, to see if it got more activations than normal Black Box.

Some alternatives suggested were: 'No bash teams, or only 'agile' teams, or multipute team activations required (one bash, one agile, one stunty).

The OP suggests funneling the limited traffic into a smaller activation period. I would rather see more traffic.. generated by something different.

Something clawless and bare-chested. Err.. I meant armorless.

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Wait.. wut? People don't scramble for a chance to play against smallkosp or the WMD's every 15 minutes? That seems.. strange.

I think if there were a 'Black Box' created that did not allow Dwarves, Chaos Dwarves, Chaos, Nurgle, Pact, or Orks, (and almost by necessity, no cheesy Amazons).. you would see a flurry of activity.

No claw, no mass av9. Hell.. even a Box with just ARR! teams would be amazing.

I think it's pretty clear money dosn't talk here.. but if it did.. if a donation drive goal were announced that would prove enough interest in an alternative to regular 'Bash Box' I would happily dedicate my FUMBBL free time to seeing that goal met.

A so called 'Rainbow Box' idea was proposed years ago. The proposal was for ANY alternative to the regular Black Box be trialed once per hour, on the hour, to see if it got more activations than normal Black Box.

Some alternatives suggested were: 'No bash teams, or only 'agile' teams, or multipute team activations required (one bash, one agile, one stunty).

The OP suggests funneling the limited traffic into a smaller activation period. I would rather see more traffic.. generated by something different.

Something clawless and bare-chested. Err.. I meant armorless.

This is going to go completely off topic into giving an alternative to the current box. (Or at least fundamentally altering the box.) Sorry Murker, but this is not the thread for that.

I have no problem with a box idea for squishy teams or fundamentally changing the box. Both have merit, but this is an idea that could quickly help the current box environment.

For the record, I would love a requirement to activate one agile, one bash, and either a mid-range or stunty team.

Would funneling the draws into once or twice an hour increase the number of games played? I think it would.

I think 30 min draws is all good. No need for 'hourly during off peak time'.

Cloggy wrote:

Gotta love the irony of this thread. The person who almost singlehandedly killed the box by his stupid minmaxed killer spam thinks this will all be fixed by changing the interval of the draws.

Upvote on this. Perhaps the box is dying due to people not wanting to play against mono-activiating killer spam or min/maxxers.

I personally have no issues with building a team like that: all of us can do it (obviously with varying degrees of success based on skill). But its proper annoying when all 3-4 of your teams get *insert infamous team name hear* every day for a week because you seem to activate the same time as *insert infamous coach name here*. Playing the same coach with a variety of different teams... all gravy, just happen to be online at the same time. Playing the same team over and and over

Not only a box problem. I looked 30min on 59 teams in ranked and nobody wanted to play a nearly fairly match up. (actitead WE, Humans and Necros btw)

Time issue, 20 CET u will get a box game, 10 am probaly not.

I prefer to reactivate the box per projects, like Human League Premiership, Elf or something like that. To bring diversity in the box. Then maybe more people are interested to play game, thats are not always Nurgle, Chaos and Smallmann.

Games are absolutely more enjoyable and less dice based without PO.
About the hybrids, they lost PO but they don't suffer Clawpomb either, so I'm not sure they have been so weakened.
For example, I found to play Amazons at high TV now more viable than in CRP even if they can't PO anymore, because my opponents can't PO them either.
About diversity in the Box, it should be enforced, because some coaches want to play only one race. So you know that if you activate in a certain time you are going to face the same coach with the same bash team.
Nothing wrong with playing vs bash teams, they are one aspect of the game and ensure a needed attrition, but playing always vs high TV teams without the proper inducements (Horatio has not been implemented yet) is boring and after a while takes its toll.
About hourly activations: it's a terrible idea, I don't want to wait for so much time, 15 minutes are already a great waste of time, let alone 1 hour.
I'd like more frequent activations instead, every 10 minutes or 5 minutes.